PHILADELPHIA – Veep wannabe Dick Cheney last night painted the Clinton-Gore era as a time of “opportunities squandered,” and told the Republican convention: “It is time for them to go!”

It was like a flashback to 1992, when Al Gore, then Democratic veep nominee, pointed to Bush’s dad, who was then president, and vowed: “It’s time for them to go!”

Cheney hailed George W. Bush, the guy who tapped him as his running mate, as a man with “the courage and the vision and the goodness to be a great president” in the advance text of a speech that vowed to bring change to Washington.

But he also gave Republican partisans some of the first red meat in a carefully scripted convention designed to present the GOP as a party of inclusion, eager to embrace women and minorities:

“What are we to make of the past eight years? I look at them and see opportunities squandered.

“The wheel has turned. And it is time. It is time for them to go.”

The honor of introducing Cheney went to his wife, Lynne – a prominent conservative intellectual known for her attacks on political correctness and sometimes compared in her outspokenness to Hillary Clinton.

Mrs. Cheney described her husband as a “fabulous father” with an “interesting mind,” who can best be understood through his love for fly fishing – “it is not a sport for the impatient. And it definitely is not a sport for chatterboxes.”

Like Bush, Cheney went to Yale. Unlike Bush, he flunked out but rose to be chief-of-staff under President Gerald Ford at age 30, a Wyoming congressman for 11 years and then defense secretary to Bush’s dad in the Gulf War.

Cheney, 59, portrayed the younger Bush as an inclusive new leader for a new era and sought by implication to paint Democrats as divisive and calculating.

“I have been in the company of leaders. I know what it takes. And I see in our nominee the qualities of mind and spirit our nation needs and our history demands. Big changes are coming to Washington,” he said.

“Bush doesn’t accept old lines of argument and division. He brings people together … reaching across the partisan aisle to do the people’s business. He leads by conviction, not calculation.”

With the evocation of Bush as a man with “the vision” to be president, there was almost a wink at the memory of the problems Bush’s dad had with “the vision thing” – as if to say this was the new, improved version.

Out of politics for nearly a decade, Cheney’s style on the campaign trail has been low-key, even laconic compared to Bush’s chatty, high-energy approach – but Bush says his running mate is warming up.

Last night’s convention session was opened by Dwayne Johnson, better known to wrestling fans as “The Rock.” He told the cheering crowd of politicians, “14 million eligible voters watch The Rock every single week … Thank you from those voters.” Then he gave his trademark call, “The Rock is in the house!”